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With regard to the TWOW stuff, would it be prudent to have a separate subpage for material from works that are yet to be published? Similar to Jon Snow/Theories, couldn't we have Character X/Unpublished?

Anyway, I just rebooted my interest in helping with the wiki and spent a good portion of this morning ironing out Littlefinger's page, which, while full of good information, was also full of sentence fragments and general grammatical errors, including a plethora of inconsistent verb tenses.

Sorry for being a little too busy to look it up at this instant but did we ever decide on a verb tense to use for our articles? I know I raised the question a long time ago (and I think I inadvertently caused a bit of a fight) but don't remember an answer. I generally tend to drift into past-tense when discussing items from a character's history ("Petyr was fostered in Riverrun") but find the present tense more natural for book events ("Petyr lies to Catelyn, claiming the dagger belongs to Tyrion Lannister.") It seems that most articles I find are done in past-tense now, which is fine with me too (more than anything I just think it should be consistent), but is that official and should I be correcting it to past tense when I see it? (Including in articles I've written in the past?)

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I seen that edit, Great job, we really need more people who improve the flow of our main articles. As for those English atrocities, unfortunately in many cases it is my domain, but we all contribute in the way we can. Anyway good to see you aboard ;)

EDIT: I am the wrong person to answer on 'verb tense' but we have started a Manual_of_Style, to help with those issues and make sure that they are not lost.

Edited February 15, 2012 by mor2

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Okay, thanks, that style guide reinforces what I naturally drift toward, which is that events that take place from the start of the books on should be referred to in the present tense. This appears to be very inconsistently applied.

Another thing I would harp on personally is the use of authorial subjective judgment. I was browsing some of my old edits which included raising the Willas Tyrell page up from a stub. I was heartened to see that it had been cleaned up and things like coat-of-arms and full family trees had been added (which I like very much as I'm pretty awful at that sort of thing, and my articles consistently require cleanup of some form), but also bristled considerably that the sentence "Willas despite his twisted leg is a much more capable leader than his father" has been somewhat unnaturally grafted onto his history. Gah! To me this sentence sticks out like a sore thumb.

First of all it's (almost certainly unintentionally) offensive; by just saying that "he's a good leader despite being crippled" we are projecting, from our modern enlightened viewpoint, that his being a cripple should affect whether or not he can be a good leader (as opposed to putting it to the Westerosi viewpoint, where we understand that they come from a less enlightened POV and thus accept that they accept Willas "despite" his twisted leg). Second, we don't even actually know that it's true; he's described as kind and intelligent, and in at least one instance he's reported to have given good advice, but we haven't met him yet so this sort of value judgment seems unjustified - he could have some as-yet-unrevealed character flaw that prevents him from being an effective leader despite his agreed-upon strengths (not that I think this is likely). Third, a generic compliment seems redundant since the entire article up to that point is discussing his strengths.

Ordinarily I'd just ax the sentence and be done with it but I thought this was a good example of how a seemingly innocuous and generally uncontroversial value judgment (to me, at least) makes the whole article come off as a bit amateurish. We're remiss if we don't bring up subjective things that are generally agreed-upon and relevant facts (Littlefinger is good with money, Cersei is beautiful, Loras is graceful, Bronn is amoral, Sandor is hideous, etc.), but drifting into the territory of this sort of authorial color commentary is IMO a very bad thing.

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Personally, I dont see fundamental problem with the POV that "he's a good leader despite being crippled", that is if his disability is somehow impairs his ability to be a leader or their society does so(as in the case of Tyrion). With that being said, I am not particularly familiar with this specific character or what type of leader he was. You obviously seem to know about this character more than I do, so I encourage you to fix this, after all this is a collaborative effort, we all do what we can and if some mistakes happen you should assume good faith. Besides, even seemingly amateurish articles can evolve into polished masterpieces ;)

P.S. I have long thought that our main articles should get some more polish, but with my English could do little to that effect.

Also if you need any help with our family trees, oat-of-arms or anything else just post here, I'll be glad to help with any technical stuff and I know others are happy todo so aswell.

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For the past / present tense I think the direction is still to use past tense for events that occur before the books and present tense for the events in the book.

For the information in the templates (noble house, character and so) there was the problem what we should show if there is a change in the books. For instance a new heir, a new marriage, a character dying and so on.

The idea was to investigate if we could use the hide / show feature. The software has been installed for some time ago and we have been experimenting with this. It is just that we feel that it does not look very good (yet). Come to think of it we (Mor2 and me) have mainly been look at using the hide / show feature for the sections of the article that handle a particular book.. Not for the templates. And I think that for the templates it would look ok.

Suggestion:

If the content of a template (for instance the character template) contains information that is directly linked to an event that occurs during the time of the books (for instance a marriage) we set the table to hidden.

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Elyas Gabel was originally cast as Jhogo, in fact. They changed the character's name part way through filming, because they felt it was too similar to Drogo. One of the behind-the-scenes on the Bluray even shows a brief scene where Irri calls him Jhogo.

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Quick note: we're considering Varys = Rugen as still just a theory? I rewrote much of the Varys page this morning and was a bit surprised by that (the page had a ton of information, but was pretty inconsistent in tone and focus). I'd thought Varys = Rugen had been confirmed beyond the shadow of a doubt (Jaime's POV in aFfC if I remember correctly) and was tempted to change it, but left it as it was for the time being.

I know it's a constant struggle to put only fact, and not theory, on the wiki pages; has this particular one been discussed?

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Recently there were many great contribution, helping to better shape this community wiki. We have Also we have updated the Portal:Culture and Portal:Geography, some of the Timeline early entries and Portal:Characters should soon be reworked to include MUCH more of the characters we love to read about.

Obviously there is still much work to be done and anyone is welcome to contribute. Expanding and Improving articles, fixing errors such as grammar or spelling mistakes, updating the Chapters Summaries as you go over the books etc its all greatly appreciated by us all.

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It is definitely Ser Andrew Estermont that helps escort Edric Storm to safety, I read the chapter last week.

While on the topic of Estermonts, has there been any further clarification of their family tree? As ASoS, AFfC and ADwD appendices all contradict each other. I'd assume ADwD is the canon one now but I was wondering if it had been clarified at all.

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I was just wondering something about Blackfyre (the sword). The wiki article (http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Blackfyre) calls it a greatsword, but we know that Daemon used it against Gwayne Corbray from horseback. Now, I suppose it's technically possible to wield a two-handed 5-6 ft greatsword whilst mounted, but it would be very awkward. Has it ever actually been called a greatsword in one of the books or an SSM?

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Regarding Pentos, what treaty was imposed on it by Bravoos, one hundred years ago?

This was in ADWD, I believe, mentioned by Ilyrio to Tyrion. Braavos imposed its banning of slavery on Pentos, forcing it to comply. The Pentoshi therefore technically don't have slaves. However, they do have indentured/bonded servants, and get around it through semantics :)